Eats Blog

5 ways Fork and Cork could better impress foodies

Celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson made fried chicken at Fork and Cork in Addison.

The inaugural Fork and Cork food festival on Friday and Saturday replaced Taste Addison. Gone were the carnival games and the corny dogs. Fork and Cork is a 21-and-up fest that focused on chefs and their food. It was hosted at the gorgeous Addison Circle Park.

Any first-year event likely has kinks to work out. Here are a few suggestions of how the target market — “foodies” — might better enjoy Fork and Cork.

1. Geek it up. Let’s get serious about what it means to love food. If the idea really is to attract gourmands, it would have been great to have chefs educating the crowd all day about ingredients or techniques we might be unfamiliar with. Teach us, then let us taste. Chefs serving pork belly is delicious, but it’s not geeky enough.

These are pop-up chandeliers placed in Addison Circle Park. How stinkin' cute is that? More, please.

2. Give us more for less. The lowest-level tickets were $35 per person. Let’s say a couple wants to go to Fork and Cork and they shell out $70. (Full disclosure: My husband and I went for the equivalent of $70 but were given free media tickets.) If we paid $70 of our own money, I would have been discouraged that I left the festival hungry. I’d suggest either bringing the price down considerably and asking patrons to pay for every sample, or charging more and feeding attendees a satisfying, exciting meal.

3. Give us more for more. Perhaps festival-goers really would pay more than $35 per person. What do they want? I think they want to take a hands-on cooking class, where they learn a new technique and get to eat a plate of their own food at the end. That likely costs more than $35. (At Central Market, for instance, a hands-on class with dinner costs $65.) But then don’t also offer $1 to $5 samples. It feels like patrons are being nickel-and-dimed.

Beef.

4. Re-market the Grand Tasting. Corralled in a corner was an area called the Grand Tasting, where patrons got in free (with the $35 ticket) and received more than a dozen free little bites and drinks. The idea sounds great on paper, but in person it was confusing. One of the first booths I visited was for Tito’s Vodka. I didn’t especially want a shot of straight vodka in the 4:30 p.m. heat, so I asked if I could pay for a mixer and make it into a drink. The answer was no: The Grand Tasting area offered tastes only. To enjoy a beverage for more than one or two ounces, I’d have to exit the area, buy one, and come back in. The Grand Tasting would have been more successful if it was mostly food, a few drinks.

5. Create activities to keep people there. In less than 90 minutes, I’d seen and tasted almost everything that my general admission ticket would allow. The music on one of the stages had ended, and at least one chef had already run out of food. What could keep people inside Addison Circle Park longer so the trip feels worth it? Maybe a few cornhole set-ups would do the trick. Or a food-related game, like teaching people how to toss pizza dough. Or a gnocchi-making station. Or a challenge to set the perfect table. Or a blind wine tasting.

Those are just a few ideas. I’m sure Fork and Cork will continue to evolve past Year One. This year, it attracted “less than 10,000 attendees” over its two days, a spokeswoman told me.

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